If you’re looking to sell your house or investment property in Dallas and you’re asking yourself “How do I sell my house without an agent?”, we can help.
Sometimes it’s best to avoid paying someone to be in the middle.
After all, paying 5-6% of the sale of a property in a commission is a lot of money. In certain situations, Texas brokers and real estate agents can be very useful and earn their commission, but not always.
How Do I Sell My House Without An Agent in Dallas?
There are a few ways to avoid paying high commissions in your Texas sale.
First, there’s a tricky custom that you’ve gotta know about.
In most sales in Dallas, roughly half of the commission you pay as the seller goes to pay for the buyer’s broker.
Doesn’t make much sense, right?
Why should you pay for the agent on the other side of the table?
You can use that to your advantage in a few ways.
First, factor in the commissions paid when you’re looking at comparable sales. If you’re finding that the homes similar to yours sold for prices that included paying realtor commissions, take that into account. If you’re curious to see how much you actually save in commissions if you “sell my house without an agent“, this article will help put it into perspective for you.Â
Don’t underprice your property – be aware that a savvy buyer is going to come in expecting to get the house for less than what you’re asking for it. If you’re doing the work of one agent, you can certainly expect to save that commission for yourself, but how much are you actually leaving on the table?
Sometimes in Dallas, buyers who aren’t represented by an agent won’t remember to negotiate the buyer’s side commission out of the price for themselves, so don’t remind them if you don’t want to pay them. It’s very common for buyers to think that they have to pay the Realtor’s commission at closing. They don’t realize that it usually comes out of the seller’s pocket. So they might think if they don’t use an agent, they are saving themselves money as well. But it’s still something you need to be prepared to discuss during the negotiation process if it gets brought up.
You may want to consider offering a lesser commission rate, like 2.5% for example, to buyer’s agents who will bring their clients and represent them throughout the process. Sure, it’s a lot of money, but don’t forget these agents still deserve to be paid for the work and effort they put in. If you’re pricing your property including that commission, you can always negotiate a better deal for a purchaser who comes without an agent.
On the other hand, if you don’t leave room for the buyer’s agent’s commission, you’ll be excluding most of the buyers in the market in Dallas. It’s not common that a buyer would be comfortable entering a transaction unrepresented. This is usually the biggest purchase of one’s lifetime, so they want to feel comfortable every step of the way by hiring an expert to represent them.
Over 90% of transactions happen through the MLS – that’s the Multiple Listing Service. It’s the main database that all the brokers in Dallas use to access information for their clients on the houses, condos, land, and investment properties for sale, along with data on the sold prices.
Once upon a time, you had to pay a full commission to get your property on the MLS. Now in Dallas, there are a few brokers who will charge you a fee just to list your property on the MLS. Often, you spend a few hundred bucks and you only pay a commission if the sale closes. But remember, this is just for the listing side! You will still need to buy a buyer’s agent on top of this.
Compared to the cost of a newspaper ad, the MLS is a cheaper way to market your property to a very wide audience.
All the major real estate search sites like Realtor.com, Zillow, Yahoo Homes, etc. get data from the MLS. Chances are good that when you submit your listing in Dallas to the MLS, information on your property will end up on most of the major sites within a few days.
Each of those sites sells ads. They’ve got packages that let you pay to enhance your listing, feature it at the top of the search, and a lot of other bells and whistles that might or might not get an interested buyer to buy your property.
Advertising is a gamble. Sometimes open houses in Dallas Texas can be a great way to sell a property, and sometimes they’re a complete waste of time. Same with newspaper ads, craigslist postings, and fancy signs – sometimes they work, and sometimes they don’t.
To effectively sell your property on your own, you have to market it well.
Putting up fliers and signs around your neighborhood can generate some calls, and there are a lot of free websites where you can post information. But often just putting up flyers and throwing an open house isn’t enough if your house doesn’t appeal to the average home buyer.
In theory, real estate agents charge big commissions because they have to spend a lot of time and money upfront to advertise your property.
Certain properties might require thousands of dollars in advertising expenses before the right buyer happens to see the ad and call. That’s the gamble real estate agents take on often!
If you want to avoid paying any commissions, you can also sell your house to investors like us for CASH
We give fair prices for properties – and we can close fast (in as little as 3-5 days if you need to).
Sometimes we’ll purchase Dallas houses, fix them up, then rent them out… other times we’ll fix them up and sell them to other people looking for great homes to grow a family and make new memories of their own – but we love to hear from people like you who are thinking of selling anywhere in Texas.
We’re investors who care a lot about Dallas.
We close fast and pay cash in as little as just 3-5 days. Give us a call now at 214-761-3150 or fill out the short form over here.